System Builders Guide: August R3000 to R9000

12 August 2014

By Wesley "CataclysmZA" Fick

Hello and welcome, gamers, to the bi-monthly System Builder’s guide, this time for the month of August. I’m publishing this half an hour out from Microsoft’s conference at Gamescom 2014, so it was a bit of a rush to get this done on time. Little has changed in the market since our last version of this guide back in June, although price drops and stock levels have changed the recommendations in some of the builds, most notably the death of the Radeon HD7950 as stock finally filters out from the retail channel. I’m actually thoroughly depressed at that – we won’t see the same kind of face-smashing GPU horsepower for under R3000 for a long time.

I also promise this month to not mope about the prices of AMD’s APUs which SHOULD be a hell of a lot cheaper than they are currently. Anyway, on with the builds!

AMD’s AM1 platform continues to be my pick for the low-power segment. This build still packs in the quad-core Sempron 3850 along with the MSI AM1I mini-ITX motherboard and 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory, this time from Corsair. Being a system-on-chip, it’s pretty easy to keep the hardware and chassis the same and upgrade to whatever new APU fits into the AM1 socket a little down the road. So, by the time 2016 rolls around, it should be possible to fit in a better, faster quad-core using the Puma architecture.

I was asked about a month ago for an alternative Intel build to this one. GPU-wise it’ll be very “meh” but you can switch out the APU and motherboard for ASUS’ J1800I-C, pairing the Intel Bay Trail Celeron J1800 with a passive heatsink and decently specced motherboard. You also need SoDIMM, laptop-spec memory to help keep the board to the super-low profile.

But hey – it’s a passively cooled quad-core machine that now has almost zero moving parts! And both the Intel AND AMD builds use less power at load than a lightbulb.

In speccing out the R3.5k build, I had some serious dilemmas. Now that reviews and user reviews of the Athlon 5350 are out in the wild, it seems that it’s a pretty potent chip, all things considered. Being a quad-core SoC helps its case a lot and the fact that it features 128 GCN-class stream processors definitely helps it a lot in the gaming segment, where some GPU muscle is preferable over whatever Intel’s weak HD Graphics can muster at this price point.

I also considered the longevity of the platform. Where is AM1 going next year? Would the user ever require moving to a better, more powerful hardware solution? AMD certainly has beefier upgrades on the way from the Puma family and Kabini (which is the socketed AM1 family) itself is pretty performant. But given the role of socket AM1 in low-power, low-price computing, it’s probably never meant for this kind of use in the first place.

So, I’ve stuck with socket FM2+. The A6-6400K is an unlocked dual-core part with 192 stream processors based on AMD’s VLIW4 architecture and it’s easily enough for a lot of games at 720p, with some older titles being fully playable at 1080p with decent refresh rates. Coupled to that is Kingston’s HyperX Fury DDR3-1866 memory, a lowly 4GB module, to help improve the memory bandwidth of the GPU. Elsewhere the build moves to a regular ATX chassis with a 350W power supply, a DVD re-writer and a 1TB hard drive for the operating system and regular storage.

Mostly “meh” but it’s a decent start otherwise. It’ll be mostly GPU performance holding this rig back, though so adding in a Radeon R7 240 or Geforce GT730, with either one packing GDDR5 memory, would be a big upgrade from what we have here.

R4500 Budget – The Basics, With Gusto

720p with Medium-to-High settings and 2x AA, 1080p with Low settings and no AA

This month’s build for R4500 sticks to mostly the same hardware as the June build at the same price point, but there are a few differences here. With stocks of the Pentium G3220 disappearing, its replacement from the Haswell refresh, the G3240, takes its place. With the slight jump we’ve seen in recent weeks with RAM prices, I’ve also dropped to using bog-standard RAM from Crucial in this build. Money’s tighter this time around and spending it on frills like LED light isn’t going to help here. MSI’s H81M-P33 returns, but only because there isn’t really a better replacement in the same price range.

The GPU recommendation swaps this month to the Geforce GTX650 because stock of the previous Radeon R7 250 seem to be low. The GTX650 offers some nifty features like streaming to Twitch using Geforce Experience without much performance loss and Shadowplay game capturing with reasonable compression. You also get access to applications and plugins that make use of Nvidia’s CUDA engine to allow the GPU to accelerate certain workloads. The alternative here is Gigabyte’s Radeon R7 250X and it matches the Geforce’s capabilities spec-for-spec, right down to both cards being able to support up to there monitors on their own.

I would offer an AMD alternative built with the A8-6600K, but not only would it be the weaker choice, that chip’s also currently out of stock at most retailers. A Haswell-based dual-core and discrete graphics is the better pick in this case.

R6500 Budget – The Budget Sweet-spot

720p with Ultra settings and 4x AA, 1080p with High settings and 2x AA

Price fluctuations in the low-end made me consider my options a lot more and some changes in the hardware market have made picking out a build a little trickier this month. I had considered sticking in the Pentium G3258 along with ASRock’s H97M Pro 4 in here but the reality of the G3258 is that it’s still a dual-core chip in a world that’s moving to having a quad-core processor in the machine by default. It needs to be clocked to at least 4.4GHz to see the same kinds of speeds as a Core i3-4150 in a benchmark that uses more than two cores. That not only means the chip will die out sooner, but you’ll need to invest in better cooling as well. That’s an expense we can do without for now.

Moving down the build, we’ve bumped ourselves up to 8GB of RAM and switched alliances to the Geforce GTX750. In previous months this would have been the domain of the Radeon R7 260X, but some bright spark at AMD thought it would be okay to tell their partners that making 1GB versions of that card was fine. Without cheap 2GB variants of the R7 260X, switching to Maxwell makes more sense because it’s newer hardware and a more efficient architecture. Wootware’s offering of refurbished PowerColor GPUs with low warranty terms doesn’t sit well with me either, as nice a bargain a Radeon HD7850 2GB would have been.

The switch to the Zalman ZM-Z1 and Corsair’s VS350 gives us better cooling capability and a better PSU. It’s not strictly required, but most people will be tempted into overclocking the GPU to see how far it can go thanks to that extra power connector. That also gives us more thermal and power headroom to accommodate the AMD-based version of this build, which would swap in a quad-core FX-4300 and MSI’s 760GM-P23 motherboard. Nothing fancy, but it’ll get the job done just as well as the Intel can, sans front-panel USB 3.0 connectors.

Rounding off the guide for today, I had a little bit of trouble picking out the hardware for the R9500 build. Although the processor gets a small bump in clock speed thanks to the Haswell refresh chips arriving on our shores and the motherboard stays the same, the recent small price hike in DDR3 memory has required me to look elsewhere for a 8GB dual-channel Kit. Kingston’s HyperX Fury line does the job well enough and fits in with the H97M Pro4’s colours.

The disappearance of the Radeon HD7950 from most retailers is saddening. You’ll not see that kind of high-end power for a while now and the only replacement is the much more expensive R9 280, which doesn’t always duck down to a decent price. Finding a cheap R9 270X is also difficult and our only option is the TurboDuo version from PowerColor. With the drop in hardware and bandwidth we’ll also need to readjust our performance expectations, with playability at UltraHD 4K with medium settings no longer a realistic goal.

Finally, I’ve moved from the Seasonic 520W to Corsair’s GS600 and with the Corsair Carbide 200R out of stock that leaves me to settle with Cooler Master’s arguably more attractive Silencio 352. The ATX case market seems to also be in a bit of a lull this month, perhaps leaving a lot of the newer designs and yearly refreshes of old ideas to the Holiday season. Still, I’d be perfectly happy with what’s on offer here.

That’s all for this week’s edition of the guide! Tune in next Tuesday for the jump to the mid-range budgets in the R11,000 to R16,500 segment. Adios!

I sometimes find it scary how my budget over time for my graphics card has just increased, because I want more performance with every upgrade…

Jedi_Hamster

Bought myself a i5-3450, GTX 570 & 8GB RAM with my last upgrade and my system can still handle everything I throw at it while delivering acceptable frame rates in 1920X1080. Dunno how long that will still last though.

Probably another year! When the Geforce 800 cards hit, that’d be a nice time to snap up a GPU upgrade, the rest of the system doesn’t need any tweaking.

Jedi_Hamster

That’s good to know! I planned on upping the RAM to 16GB this week but opted for a 120GB SSD instead for my OS.

Michael Bouwer

Tossed up between getting an Intel Core i7-4930K and an Intel Core i7-4770K…I know the price difference is fairly big, but would it be worth spending that extra for the 4930K? I mean, does it have better value for money than the 4770K? According to http://www.futuremark.com, it doesn’t. Sooooo undecided. Help plis…

Oh and can anyone recommend a decent cost-effective mobo for these processors?

Thanks Wesley! I do some software development and occasional 3D modelling as a hobby, but mainly gaming :D.

I’ll take a look at them, thanks!

Bob

I know this is related to the laptop buyers guide not the system buyers guide, but what laptop would u recommend for for an engineering student. All I was told was that it should have as much ram as possible?

trollolololy

Depends will you be doing 3D rendering?
If yes then get a desktop unless you got atleast 12k to burn.

Else every thing else a I5 will Handle all at a reasonable amount price. Typing, coding, even some Photoshop

Depends on what CPU you currently have. There are some CPUs that share sockets that are incompatible even though the pin-outs are the same, like the several generations of LGA775 boards that either could or couldn’t support Pentium 4 chips.

To answer your question though, no CPU is compatible with just any other board. Intel and AMD are still separate and both have several sockets floating around on the market now that make things a bit confusing.

Alex Rowley

I currently have an intel dual core. Would it be compatible with the MSI A78M-E35 socket FM2+? Or is it AMD only? I plan actually getting an AMD CPU anyways so it would just mean I would have to get the CPU and motherboard at the same time.

Sadly not. I don’t know what generation your Intel chip is from, but socket FM2+ is only for AMD’s FM2/FM2+ APUs. AMD’s APUs are actually not very price competitive at the moment, so I’d recommend most people aim for a Core i3 and discrete graphics (Core i3-4130 and Radeon R7 250X/Geforce GTX650) which will offer you better CPU and GPU performance. So then you’d need a socket LGA1150 motherboard, DDR3 memory (if you don’t have already) and the new CPU.

bokka1

Thanks for the new article, now I can check out all the options.

Ludwig Roos

R9500 the p in proccesor is gone out fishing XD

MR.F

mr. Fick kindly advise where in joburg can i order this ASRock H97M Pro4,

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